For a team that went to the World Series in 2012, the Tigers had a few easily identifiable — and surprisingly gaping — holes they still needed to patch over, a few flaws to fix in the offseason, before they felt fully equipped to go chasing a championship again.

In one fell swoop, they got a whole lot of that done with one preemptive move, before the offseason free-agent market really even began to heat up, filling in most of those holes with the signing of outfielder Torii Hunter.

The deal, first reported by FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, is believed to be for two years, $26 million, and if the Tigers can get even three quarters of their needs filled by Hunter’s presence in the lineup for the next two seasons, that price tag will be a bargain.

That’s why the Tigers moved so precipitously to get this deal done after his visit to Detroit Tuesday made it clear how much of a match this was.

They wanted Hunter.

Hunter wanted to play here.

Why not move fast, get it done now?

Could the Tigers have been more cost-conscious in their negotiating stance, and worked out a lower price tag, one more befitting what a 37-year-old coming off a career year — a regression waiting to happen — could garner? Sure. But nearly a third of the other teams in the big leagues were hoping they’d play hardball, and let Hunter play the field.

Why risk it?

Could the Tigers have gone in a different direction and maybe gotten a younger player with more long-term potential? Probably. There were reports that they’d done their “due diligence” in inquiring about Diamondbacks star Justin Upton, and there are still guys like Josh Hamilton, Michael Bourn, Nick Swisher, Cody Ross and Angel Pagan on the free-agent market. More bang for the buck, right?

But few, if any, of those guys come equipped with the full package of skills that Hunter possesses, the ability to impact so many areas — on and off the field. In the case of a guy like Upton, he might provide an MVP-caliber star, or he might turn into a king-sized headache, a tease that never fully delivers on his promise, generating constant queries about when he’ll be dealt — as he has in Arizona.

To get Upton, the Tigers would have to deal away the very youngsters — guys like Avisail Garcia and Nick Castellanos — whose positions Hunter is keeping warm for the next couple of seasons.

And they didn’t necessarily need a superstar anyway.

As manager Jim Leyland noted, the Tigers just needed a tweak to get over the hump, not an overhaul.

“It’s tricky how you put your team together. There’s always a fine line between enough stars and one too many. So I think we need that right piece, that certain type of piece here or there, just one or two maybe, that would possibly make the difference, because we’re in very good shape,” he said after he was re-signed for 2013. “Our nucleus is fine. But sometimes you need to tweak it a little bit and get that right guy with the right heartbeat.”

Let’s face it.

Sometimes, a match is just a match. You needn’t always overthink it.

And from all appearances, it’s a match made in baseball heaven.

The Tigers went into a second straight offseason looking to upgrade team speed — as Leyland put it, “sometimes we’re not the easiest team to coach third base for” — but last year came up with only a couple of complementary pieces, guys like career minor leaguer Quintin Berry.

Nice story, not a long-term solution. Not even a full-time solution.

The Tigers needed another full-time player with some legs, even if they’re not quite as fast as they used to be.

They also needed a proven bat, a guy that could help stretch out the lineup past the big three of Austin Jackson, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder. Oh, and they would prefer it was someone who could make left-handers pay a bit, something they struggled to do all last season. They got just a .255 average from all their corner outfielders last season, and .235 from their right fielders.

Hunter hit a career-best .313 in 2012, including .340 against lefties. He also drove in 69 runs and scored 57 in the No. 2 spot in the order — where he was penciled in about two-thirds of the time — sandwiched between AL Rookie of the Year Mike Trout and Albert Pujols.

So he’s got a bat.

How about a glove? That would certainly help on a team that not only has more than its fair share of defensive shortcomings, but also occupies a home stadium with a cavernous outfield.

Granted, it’s not the same young Torii Hunter who spent more than a decade in Minnesota, pestering the Tigers to no end, robbing home runs, winning nine Gold Gloves. But it’s still far better than the majority of the options the Tigers went with in right and left field in 2012.

Hunter was eighth-best among MLB outfielders (15) in the stat of Defensive Runs Saved last year, five spots behind his teammate Trout (21), but nine points better than the best Tigers outfielder, Jackson (6). Oh, and Hunter had 14 outfield assists last year.

In August, Leyland called the Angels’ outfield “without question, hands down, the best defensive outfield” in the AL last year, and one of the best he’d ever seen in all his years in baseball.

By contrast, the Tigers ranked 25th in baseball in DRS from their right fielders (-17), most of that coming from Brennan Boesch (-12). And they had 20 outfield assists as a team.

If you want to raise age as the red flag, that’s understandable. Yes, the Tigers have gotten burned in the recent past by signing (or re-signing) aging star outfielders, guys who can see a precipitous drop-off in production. And yes, his batting average on balls in play (.389 in ’12) screams of someone who will regress to the mean.

But Hunter is durable — he’s appeared in fewer than 140 games just three times in 14 full MLB seasons, and just once in the last seven — and consistent — finishing with less than 80 RBI just once and 20 home runs only twice since 2001.

Barring an injury, that’s what Hunter can give the Tigers on the field.

His off-the-field contributions may be just as impressive, though. And just as valuable.

Hunter is the perfect mentor for a team that will likely have at least one youngster — like Castellanos or Garcia — still trying to figure out how to play the outfield in the bigs on the fly. No better guy than Hunter — who Trout widely credited as mentoring him through his stellar rookie year — to take them under his wing.

“He’s always asking questions. He always asks those questions,” Hunter said of Trout on MLB Network Monday. “I always say, ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ He’s that guy, and he’s always there asking those questions. And when I give him an answer, tell him what he needs to do, I can see him the next day applying himself, and out there working on what he needs to work on, whether it’s running the bases, or on defense.”

And it’s not like he won’t have an impact on the older guys, too.

If you followed the comments of veteran reliever Octavio Dotel near the end of the season — when he intimated that the Tigers weren’t as pumped up as his Cardinals teammates he’d won the World Series with a year earlier — you might figure a little leadership would be in order.

“If you’ve got somebody in there whose voices can pump guys up and everything, that’s all right. But if you listen to the comments of some of our star players, they really don’t like that type of thing. So that depends. I’m not going to go out there and cheerlead every night. I’m not going to do that. Now, if you’ve got a personality that fits in there and it just happens, but I don’t think you can plant stuff like that. You can’t plant a leader. A leader just has to happen. You can’t come to a team and go, ‘Oh, I’m going to be the leader.’ That has to happen. You can’t just make that happen,” Leyland said last week. “I kind of know what Dotel was referring to, like they were a little rah-rah, a little pumped up, some of those guys were younger, they were really excited, and I’m not saying he’s wrong. I’m just saying that doesn’t set with everybody.”

That kind of thing wasn’t what guys like Fielder or Cabrera, or even Jackson or Justin Verlander, are known for.

But it’s Torii Hunter to a T ... H.

Granted, the Tigers will also be getting Victor Martinez back this season, and being a vocal leader — and good teammate — is exactly what the Tigers looked at when they signed him, too.

I can’t imagine it hurts to have more than one of those kind of guys, though, two (or more) guys driving everyone in the same direction.

Toward a World Series.

There’s no question that’s what’s driving Hunter.

He even changed his Twitter bio Wednesday to reflect his thought process: “Found a job! Headed to Motown to win that ring!”

And the Tigers found just the guy to help get them there.

Email Matthew B. Mowery at matt.mowery@oakpress.com and follow him on Twitter @matthewbmowery.